Lytica Inc. announced the appointment of Dr. Shahzad Khan as their new Chief Research Officer (CRO), effective April 2nd, 2018. Three of Dr. Khan’s colleagues have also joined Lytica as research staff. As Lytica’s CRO, Dr. Khan will be responsible for setting research direction and defining the core technologies required for Lytica’s product roadmap. In…
A company should expect to pay for a specific electronic device a price commensurate with their Competitiveness within that particular commodity. This Competitiveness is the measure of how the supply chain sees the company – Ken Bradley, Founder & CTO, Lytica Inc. When Ken Bradley founded Lytica in 2005 as a consultancy practice, his primary…
Mid-way into 2016, the electronics supply chain continues to be hammered by numerous challenges, many of them versions of old problems but which still pack the capacity to do extensive damage to sales and profits at OEMs, component manufacturers and distributors alike. Some of the current difficulties facing electronics makes, however, are emerging from new…
In this article, I summarize some points from a lecture that I gave at Hong Kong University in 2014; it drew on a blog I wrote in 2013. I repeat some of the ideas from that blog here because I believe they are critically important for world-class companies. I was focused on supply base design,…
I am surprised by the number of supply chain and purchasing professionals that use the terms Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Strategic Sourcing as excuse for inaction. Don’t misunderstand me. I believe in total cost and in business strategy. Most supply chain consulting and university programs have these concepts imbedded in them as they…
Over the 4 years since Lytica Inc. launched our electronic component benchmarking tool set, we’ve concluded there are 4 reasons why companies don’t benchmark their electronic component expenses for competitiveness. There are assumed to be four reasons why companies don’t benchmark component prices. These are: Comfortable with the status quo Believe they are getting great/better…
To companies focused on operational excellence, Lean Principles and the discipline of Benchmarking are considered two complimentary and indispensable tools toward achieving world class performance. Getting Lean is all about identifying and getting rid of waste, where waste is defined as any non-value adding step that customers are unwilling to pay for. Benchmarking is a…
Not benchmarking your electronic component spend? If so, continuing to disregard this critical diagnostic at your own risk. Quick. Name 1 inherently deflationary commodity. A commodity that, apart from the ebbs and flows due to supply and demand, always gets cheaper. The broad answer is electronics; more specifically – an integrated circuit (IC). This month marks…
Since my company, Lytica Inc., introduced analytics based price prediction for electronic components, many major EMS and OEM companies have saved millions of dollars by applying this technology to their materials spending. As with the disruptive technologies described by Clayton Christenson in The Innovator’s Dilemma, those stuck like deer in the headlights clinging to a…
With analytics and big data emerging as high growth market opportunities and Lytica’s component price prediction applications achieving a market leading position in analytics, Lytica’s Board of Directors elected to spin out Lytica’s consulting and services business into a new and separate company. Effective January 1, 2015, Silecta Inc., a newly formed corporation, began operations…